A couple more Bach duets on mandolin

keith.rogers

keith.rogers

Well-known member
A couple short mandolin duets. Not a lot going on - the usual little bit of EQ, compression and small room reverb. I'm not sure about the stereo pan - too wide?

These are J.S. Bach Inventions 3 & 4 in D and Dm, transcribed for 2 mandolins by Mike Marshall and Caterina Lichtenberg. Played probably about 2/3 - 3/4 tempo. Works in progress, but our son only visits a couple times a year and I usually only get a few hours to go through some of these and set the mics up. These were recorded last week just before we took him to the airport. (Might be a year before we get together with mandos again.)





p.s. 1ea Soyuz 013 FET SDC mics on each mandolin, maybe a foot or a few inches less, tried to aim for the lower (treble) f-hole. We were just a couple feet apart, so the mics probably about 4', so inevitable bleed. The tracks are not panned full LR in the mix. In Logic the pan dial goes from -64 to +64, and I had these set at -40/+40.
p.p.s. (edit) looked at them in the iZotope Imager (part of Ozone) and also Insight, so it looks like the instruments are a bit inside the 45/135 degree marks, i.e., not wide-wide. Doesn't bother me through the monitors but in the headphones I'm not sure.[/MEDIA]
 
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You've missed a trick here - this as a video on youtube would be very popular - mandolins are niche instruments but with VERY dedicated followers so a video that showed the instruments and how you play them would tick a lot of boxes, and I think find a following. I found when listening I kept hearing those little mandolin flourishes and started to imagine how they'd been played, mainly because the recording was solid - so I discovered I'd payed little attention to the recording and had to go back and listen again! Nice job. (but what did it look like?) Beat up ancient mandolin with gaffer tape on the cracks or a polished and well loved thing?
 
@rob aylestone - Thanks, but I was unshaven and (IIRC) might have still been in my PJs when we did this :). And, we didn't have them anywhere close to memorized, so there were 2 stands smack in front of us in my small music room. I *did* think about video, but we'd have had to move to a bigger room and use the Zoom F8n, and set up 2 cameras (at least) to get angles around both stands... Maybe next (oops, later *this*) year!
 
By a curious synchronicity, I just happened to listen to Chris Thile doing a Bach sonata on mando. Okay, I enjoyed yours, too lol. It's been a mando morning. FWIW, are you playing on the left or the right? FWIW #2: The sound here is fine, but I kept thinking about how a bigger, better space would make this pop! (One reason I record to my Zoom H6 is so that I'm mobile if I want to be. You too, right?
 
dobro said:
By a curious synchronicity, I just happened to listen to Chris Thile doing a Bach sonata on mando. Okay, I enjoyed yours, too lol. It's been a mando morning. FWIW, are you playing on the left or the right? FWIW #2: The sound here is fine, but I kept thinking about how a bigger, better space would make this pop! (One reason I record to my Zoom H6 is so that I'm mobile if I want to be. You too, right?
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Thanks! And, I'll take your advice on a PJ video under advisement, though, honestly, it's not my best look at this point. (Our son can get away with that stuff.)

I'm on the right side, playing the 2nd part - technically the "left hand" but somewhat rearranged for a treble clef/mandolin (vs. mandocello, which is how the 2nd part is done on the J.S. Bach album).

p.s. I can try some different IRs/"spaces" in Logic's Space Designer plugin. I purposely chose a smaller "nice room" because it was done in a small room. Easy enough to change without much trouble. Let me fool with it for a few days. (Gotta practice my lesson now.)
 
A multi camera video with editing is always a superior video.

That said I agree with RFR and Dobro that any video on this would have made a big difference in viewer engagement ...and yeah the PJ's might have been cool... Rough and raw when you are as good as you two are is going to be just fine for the average viewer. An Iphone on a tripod with Zoom h6 going to the lightning port would have resulted in a perfectly fine high quality youtube video. OH Yeah remember to always video in landscape mode with the camera for the YT.

BTW really enjoyed listening so cool when you can do something like this with your own flesh and blood! Bravo! ENCORE!
 
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